bakerstreet | i haven't slept very well since the last time that we spoke

[ And this. ]

There's something exceptionally annoying about the way he has no control over which things bother him, or when they decide to present themselves as issues. There's something over-the-top about something he chose, knowing the ramifications of such a choice completely, and accepted in the seconds before he pushed through it being the thing that still bothers him, even now.

Leonard might still have--dreams? nightmares? whatever--about his choice to die. Not that he's admitted as much, or said even a single word about it. It probably wouldn't really be a surprise if he did admit to it. Remembering your own death isn't a thing most people can say they've accomplished.

Nights like this tend to let the similarly-focused thoughts he tries to ignore most of the time start to filter through at an easier rate. About Sara's choice--him, over the timeline; the fact that no matter the place he's carved out on the team for himself. again. it still doesn't fit the same; that out-of-place feeling that tugs somewhere in his chest so much that he's mostly numb to noticing it.

Except on nights like this.

Sometimes, it's easy to drown it all out with booze; sometimes that won't even touch it. He takes up residence in various places on the nights that doesn't help-- tonight, the cargo bay. Why? No real reason, just because. Good a place as any to be awake when sleep isn't going to happen.

All quiet on the homefront, Gideon?
Sara had asked, as easy and normal as midnight to midmorning went.

The kind that found Sara heading to her office in the middle of the night, to dim lights and only the sounds of the Waverider as company. Sara hasn't done good with her eyes closed in what amounts to a decade now. It's better now, some, but there are some things she'll never be better than some better at. That said. The Waverrider is a better place than most for being awake even on a good night.

Especially the bridge, where she could turn over and over the map and where they could go next. What to fix.

She had not expected Gideon to tell her, Yes, Captain Lance. All of the crew, save Mister Snart, are sleeping.

It had been surprising enough to not be the only person awake and about at this not late enough to be early yet hour, but there was something about being informed he was in the cargo bay that settled on Sara's heart harder. That had always been the place he'd gone when the mission went bad, when things with Mick, or them, or even when they both been were staying out of the way. It's a minute or two before she decides she's letting herself interrupt whatever, whyever.

But she does. Some part of her can't help thinking that's an of course, she does, like it was an of course, she let him live. Things that ring in the tin penny box of what she has left a soul, and what she's doing wrong and right by it, on this path, as the Waverider's, and The Legends, Captain. It's still an of course (and she wonders if that's like an of course, it's not enough at least not without him), and still she lets it happen.

Ends up walking to the far end of the ship. Measured steps with weighted sound, instead of approaching silent.

Maybe the choice of room was on purpose. Like some part of him subconsciously wanted to be found. Maybe by her, specifically, even. But he definitely didn't put any actual thought into it at the time.

He glances up at the sound of boots-on-metal, not entirely surprised to find Sara in the doorway. "What's happenin', Cap'n?"

It's a commentary on them, and where they all go. Mick went to the dining room. The Professor and Ray, both, for the Lab. Jax for the engine room. She'd just come from the bridge, where she could be found, like clockwork most nights, among seldom few other places. The other three, some more new than others, still figuring it out.

There's always the option of telling him the other thing on her mind is how to re-engineer the Peruvian earthquake of 1746, but it's not much of an option when she's not much the type to play all around the mulberry bush first. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

"I guess I am, by a nerd's need to name people, technically also a Captain of a kind." He smirks. He's hilarious, don't you just love him and his awful deflection techniques?

Relenting, he shrugs one shoulder, "Nothing special, sleep sucks." Or he sucks at it. One of those.

Sara's mouth turns too easily to something of a sideways smile. He's good, Leonard is, better than he wants to let on, in death or stolen-from-death (which isn't exactly the same as 'resurrected,' is it?), but it's not something he was going to agree with carte blanche, when he can throw something else out in front of it. The unnamed, and the twist on the name.

Pot, kettle.

Mirror, mirror.

Sara walked in, not quite leaning on anything. "Interesting choice for how to fix that."

"Like there are a ton of options on a hunk of metal in the middle of space-time?" Actually, maybe there are plenty of options. Hell, if he really wanted it, Gideon could probably give him something to knock him out for awhile. But that was the easy route and Leonard was used to not sleeping anyway.

He tips his head up toward her, eyebrow perked, "You're not exactly any more asleep than me." A beat. "What's your excuse?" Not that he'd td her his own yet, either.

There are enough options though, and there's something in the way he shifts like Leonard's brain is already listing them. Before Sara can, or maybe because he'd already thought of them while in here. She has no clue how long he has been in here, no one noticing, and it's a stretch to try and place when exactly, timewise, she had last seen him in the evening. With Mick?

But Mick's asleep, with everyone, or she'd wonder why or how Mick didn't know, or wasn't here. The questions still linger.

Sara doesn't bat an eye at the turnaround, and she says it as simple as though that were only it, "Peru."
It's not, but it's, also, not been a bad night. Or bad as bad could actually be. Just a night.

Mick tends to sleep like a rock and Leonard's got decades of practice of getting away from him for insomnia-riddled nights like this anyway. That might not be quite the surprise she finds it if she knew certain details. But, then, how could she? She didn't know either of them quite like that, did she?

He squints at the response, which initially feels incredibly random and out of nowhere, but it's only a short few seconds before--

"What's happening in Peru?" That's far more interesting than 'No, really, Leonard, why aren't you sleeping?' anyway.

"Actually--" Sara raises a hand, slightly gesturing to the side, at the same time as her head goes that way. "--it's more what's not--" She stresses the word, inflecting for the opposite of his question. "--happening in Peru."

"Oh?" Both brows arch at the comment, which is both a commentary on their non-conversation and the actual issue at hand, simultaneously, since Sara is a multitasker like that. "Well, in that case, what's not happening in Peru?"

A beat and--

"And is there anything specific you can tie it to?" Like something that changed, and rippled out, in a cause-and-effect wave. There's an ever-present paranoia connected to the aberrations she finds in the timeline now, like one day it will be too much, too big to fix, and the only solution will be fixing what Mick broke by stealing him from Fate. He's pretty good at ignoring it, but the knot of tension has taken up obvious residence in his chest.

"Darhk." If anyone wondered if Sara Lance was capable of a word placed with such tensely-tenuous neutrality overlaying at least six to ten different, barely recognizable, undertones, it belongs to that utterance. Name. Momentary invocation of their latest of personal, and recurring, devils. The second after an anything but flippant verbal equivalent of a shrug, lends the other option. "Or us."

It's hard to really say what her opinion shows to that one. To the fact the Legends are not turning up roses against being that option, fault, blame. Not with the Spear of Destiny. Not with breaking time by their interactions with their own selves. Not with stealing and keeping Leonard. Not with the announcement they'd just steal the Waverider if anyone took it back again. Not with not stopping Rip soon enough.

Still, Sara does not belabor or bemoan any reference to any of those. Her arms cross low, and one of her feet shifted absently on the top of her boot. "There was supposed to be an earthquake in the fall of 1746. Two cities collapsed and nearly 20,000 people died. But. Gideon is reporting the anachronism for 1746 is that there was no earthquake. No devastation of Lima and Callao, and no dead people, who all have thousands and thousands of descendants, who never should have been born, scattered through the timeline currently."

Edited 2017-11-21 04:00 (UTC)

The venom in that name is a snap against silence, and for the smallest blip of a second, it's almost a relief. But it's gone before it settles because she adds the very real reality on its heels. He doesn't break his gaze with her, as much as he wants to.

"That guy needs to stop," hasn't he caused enough dage by now? Adding salt to still open wounds just seemed unnecessary.

He nods a bit at the description of events. "And we're supposed to-- fix it, and make sure people die and are never born." He cants his head slightly. "Sometimes, this gig doesn't sound so heroic."

"Pretty sure that's kind the shit you get when you break the cardinal rule," Sara said. Half a retort, and half an agreement. It was easier when it was just fixing hiccups in time and space. People, with the means or the magic, who went somewhere and did something. But, no. They'd broken all of time first. Even whatever Darhk and his daughter got up to, was just something exacerbating a massive mess made by them before Rip's mission brought him into play.

She can't fix that, and in the end, she wouldn't.
She's biased, to her own, and if that makes her a bitch, then it does.

That was why she was up in the middle of the night thinking about how to fix things like Peru.

Which brings her back to -- "What's keeping you from sleeping?" Yeah. She didn't forget much ever.

"Yeah, guess so." he scoffs something half-amused, half something else entirely. Sometimes it would be easier if he could go back. To before all of this. This mission, this crew, this ship-- this life. Things were simpler, once, when his biggest concern was what new, creative way he would make Barry Allen's life a living hell for the day--or week, if he was feeling particularly ambitious. But simpler isn't always better, is it? Funny, that.

A smirk pulls at his mouth. Of course she goes back to that, because that's more interesting to her than what she's already spent- what, hours?- going over in her own head. He shrugs one shoulder, "Take your pick. Got a plethora of things to choose from." Which is to say, 'No, Sara, I don't want to talk about it', even if as he says it he knows, on some level, she's just as likely to not let it go at that as she is to drop it.

Leonard Snart | DCtv

Train or Canon or Etc or.

{Don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore | Train AU

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{See right through my walls, catch me 'cause I'm already falling | New Unnamed AU

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